 Hello everybody. So this is the first batch of questions for the On Learning for Change Agents course. I was going to originally do it on Facebook live, but some of you maybe were there for that debacle. We wrestled with it for an hour. I apparently have not performed the correct rituals and made the appropriate sacrifices to the gods of technology, and they have not smiled on me. Hopefully this will work. So I'm just going to make maybe one little video for each question, and I'll get to as many of them as I have time for right now. Some of them were not super relevant to the content of the course, so I might skip some of those. So the first one that I'm going to address is from Lois, and I'll just take an excerpt from it. She said, originally disruption was hailed as all good and the breakthrough that we've all needed, but now it's becoming okay to talk about the loss that comes with throwing out the old. Yeah, to a large extent in activist circles disruption is celebrated as an end in and of itself, which is if you accept that the status quo is rotten, then of course any disruption is good. If you have this good and evil, old, bad, new, good paradigm, then disruption is valid as an end in and of itself. When you introduce some complexity to that way of seeing the world, where there might be some value in the old that we might be talking about a different kind of transition rather than sweeping everything aside and starting anew, when we realize that the mania for novelty and newness might itself be part of the old story, then we can no longer uphold disruption as a positive goal, categorical good, and we can understand that anything that is building a new story is going to be disruptive. Disruptive technology, for example, it was not like somebody said, okay, I'm going to create Uber or Airbnb or something like that, and the purpose is I'm going to get those guys in the hotel industry, I'm going to take them down. That happened as a side effect of a constructive goal. Now, I'm not saying that there's a lot of problems that have come with both Uber and Airbnb, but my point is that disruption was not their goal. So I think that any service that we render to a more beautiful world is in some way going to be disruptive to the old story, but we don't have to frame it that way in order for that disruption to happen. What would be an example here? Yeah, so if you're working to say protect some piece of land from development or from being paved over and made into a highway, that is going to be disruptive to the highway industry or to the real estate industry or something like that. It's going to, for them, and if those kinds of campaigns are successful on a mass level, then it's not going to just be disruptive for one developer, but it's going to be disruptive for the entire industry itself. It's going to change the rules of the game. It's going to shift the playground to another arena where you can't just assume anymore that local governments are going to rubber stamp your plan, for example. So yeah, I think that's enough about disruption. Yeah, and there's a part of me, I guess, psychologically that revels in disruption and just wants to be done with this all. And just to take note of that as well and maybe ask where does that rebellion, that it's almost a nihilistic rebellion, where does that come from? All right, the next question is from Jay, and I'll read a little bit of it here. I work with young people, middle schoolers, and have one at home almost 12 years old. And I see how easy it is for them to adopt hopelessness and cynicism as they enter a period of awareness of wars, famines, environmental degradation, and so forth. And he's like, how do I address that without seeming dishonest? How to talk to young people about the news which they inevitably pick up on and saying that if he tries to shield them from these horrors and these reasons for despair, then he's, then they won't trust him, they come across, he will come across to them as dishonest. So I think where we have to start is to understand that the news that these kids are picking up on is a very partial view of reality. What is considered newsworthy depends on what the news gatherers and the news presenters, the media, depends on what they believe to be important, who they believe to be important, and how they think the world works. So from that worldview, they're going to identify certain items as important and filter out the things that are actually the cause for the most hope. Because what is the cause for hope is kind of off the radar screen of the conditioning narratives, the conditioning mythology, the sponsoring stories that underlie all of our dominant institutions, including the news. So you have to go beneath that and ask what makes something newsworthy and what values, what biases are encoded in the choice of what is newsworthy. Yeah, I mean, you could also say that the media is only capable of seeing what is already part of their worldview. So I guess what's needed in communicating with young people? I mean, certainly to validate that despair is an honest, authentic response to what is being presented to us. But then you have to go into a critique of what is being presented to us and why, and what does it serve? And is it really true? And what does it leave out? Who does it leave out? And what are they assuming about how the world works? Let me see if I want to say something else. Yeah, I had one more thought about that. To understand that the next step past despair is not optimism. It does not immediately follow despair. It doesn't just flip. Despair doesn't just flip into optimism and celebration. That's called bipolar. The progression is first through a phase of not knowing where you start to question the foundations of the despair. And you're like, yeah, maybe I don't understand how this world works. And the logical, airtight logical case for why we're doomed is based on questionable premises. That is the empty space into which a new story and a new logic can come. So imagine, here's a good analogy. Imagine that someone has a terminal diagnosis, cancer. And the doctors say you're going to die in three months and there's nothing we can do. If you accept what medicine says about how the body works, what's possible, what are the valid tools to fight cancer, if you accept all of that, then if you are nonetheless optimistic, then you're kind of in a fantasy. You're in denial, as they would say. But if you question the premises of the diagnosis, if you look into alternative modalities and you realize that actually there are people who have healed from this, when you question the account of the body that the diagnostician is offering you, then hope is no longer irrational. Part of that process might be to, it's like, wow, I know that like, maybe you see some other examples of people recovering from this condition of other principles operating and you just don't know anymore. It's like, yeah, I don't know how it's possible to heal, but I know that it is possible. I know that this picture is incomplete that I'm being offered. That openness, which is really a kind of humility, it says, I just don't know. Maybe it's possible. That even to entertain that possibility is, that's essential for you to even look for another option from which genuine hope can arise. So yeah, I hope that I hope it's clear how that maps onto the prognosis for the world. The despair is built on a certain set of premises, the same set of premises that the whole world destroying machine is built on, the same causality, which means that if you want to address the despair of young people, the cynicism of young people, young people, you're going to have to go that deep. Okay, so Kazemira writes about her default mode of judgment. I mean, she's on board with unlearning judgment, but it's this instant judgment about herself or about others. And she's trying to use one of the mantras I've offered. I can't remember if it's in this course. Another intelligence runs through it, or you could be applying the mantra of, what is it like to be you? But when push comes to shove, that judgment and the emotions underneath it, the pain underneath it, it's just instantaneous. So what do I do about that? So you have to understand that the deconditioning, the unlearning takes some time, and very often the first step is to observe what has already been happening. It's almost like a helpless observation where, but at least something that has been unconscious and reflexive is now becoming conscious, even though you're helpless to stop doing it. But that's part of the process of coming into sovereignty. You have to first understand even what there is in order to change it. And it's not actually even that you change it, like by suppressing the emotions underneath the judgments or suppressing the judgments themselves. It's that when you give attention to them, and also give attention to your willingness to stop doing that, to your desire to stop doing that, to the discomfort that maybe you are now feeling as you notice these patterns, that attention sets a process in motion that loosens the hold of the habits. So it really doesn't have to be a struggle. In fact, struggling against them maybe even gives them more life. But it's a process of noticing, noticing what is becoming obsolete for you. Why is it becoming obsolete? Because you are transitioning into a worldview that doesn't offer them valid space, that recognizes that those judgments are based on an inaccurate view of human beings and why they do things. And again here, it might be that the certainty that was beneath the judgments begins to crumble. And it's, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what I would do if I were in someone else's shoes. There's another question about that here. Maybe I'll mix these two together. Okay, a bit later. I'll get to it soon. But there's another one related to that. So keep this one short and move on. Okay, this next question I'm going to answer just because it's funny. Jim says, would Charles ever consider being a consultant for the US government? Perhaps in a Buttigieg administration, minister of unlearning, for example? Yeah, for one thing, I wouldn't want to be a minister. I mean, or, you know, I don't feel like I have any talent for administration. You know, yeah, if there were a government that had a ministry of unlearning, that would mean that the world has changed so much that maybe there would be a place for me in the, you know, among the power establishment. But at this point, I don't think I'd be very useful to those people except maybe, you know, behind the curtain, encouraging the part of someone in government who doesn't, who wants to resist. But yeah, I mean, really, I don't think that my best role and that of a lot of other people who are doing the kind of work that I do is to impose these ideas from the top through a power structure. Anyway, I know that it was kind of a humorous thing. So just thought I'd respond to that. It's very flattering. Okay, the next one here is from Eamon, basically saying everybody on this course is very privileged and what privileges are we willing to give up in order to make a more beautiful world? What kinds of conveniences, pleasures and advantages are we having in the current social system that we are really ready for change, that we are ready to be, for these to be taken away from us? So first, I would not immediately assume that everybody on this course is highly privileged. And I guess compared to a Yemeni villager who's getting bombed and droned right now, yeah, we're probably all pretty privileged. But there's, you know, there are people of color, there are people of economic poverty on this course. I mean, that's one reason that I offer it by gift that so that people with the privilege of financial abundance can be on the same team with people who don't have that particular privilege. So, and why do I call it a privilege? I mean, what if you worked hard for your money and so forth? You know, a privilege is something it's a it's a special right granted by authority or granted by a power structure that is more available to some than to others. And I don't think that privilege is, you know, it becomes this totalizing lens through which you can analyze anything through that lens of privilege. So it can be a very powerful lens to understand oneself and understand society. But when you only use that lens, then there's things that get left out. And this is related to the theme of unlearning. What assumptions do we carry into our very conception of what privilege is? Because the advantages and dispensations and privileges that that we might offer as examples here, you know, the privilege of having a big house or fancy car or financial security and investment portfolio, full health insurance, something like that. These are, for one thing, they're not making people the privileged very happy. If you want to find happy people, and maybe some of you have had this experience, you got to go to, you know, Senegal. You have to go to Afghanistan. I mean, you'd think that people would be miserable in Afghanistan. But I just talked to somebody who makes trips to Afghanistan and hangs out with ordinary people there and villagers. And she's like, yeah, the level of joy there, the way that they welcome guests, the way that they share with each other, the daily experience of life. These people are much happier than anyone I know here. And I've heard, you know, I mean, it's like that in so many places on earth. So we need to question what is what is the value system underneath the things that underneath our assumptions about what constitutes privilege, what constitutes advantage, and most relevantly, what are we willing to sacrifice? Is this transition a matter of making do with less of being less happy? Or actually, could it be that the things that we need to sacrifice the most are things that get in the way of our happiness? And maybe we're going to have to rely on each other more. Maybe we're going to have to have our hands in the dirt more. Maybe we're going to have to, instead of being financially independent, we're going to be community dependent. Maybe we're going to have to find ways to resolve conflicts without appealing to a police state. I don't think we're looking at a worse life here, a life where we use herbal medicine instead of technological medicine most of the time, where we live close together and we walk and bike to see each other rather than drive and fly. This is not a picture of social regression. So instead of what are we going to have to give up, I'd like to orient toward what do we already want to give up? What privileges are weighing heavy on us? The goal here is not to give up privileges so that we are no longer among the privileged and we get out of jail free card from our guilt. The oppressed of the world don't care whether we get to think of ourselves well or not. What they care about is that we use whatever gifts that we have, whatever privileges, whatever abilities, whatever we've been given or earned in our lives to make the world a better place. And then there are the things that are booby prizes in compensation for what we really want. And as those become evident to us, maybe some of them we do want to make a sacrifice of, and maybe there is a little bit of fear around that, but there's also a feeling of readiness that this is weighing heavy on me now. Okay, here's a quick one from Todd. I'm observing my mind creating a new them, those who engage in polarizing debate over arguments that are just two sides of the same coin. So yeah, this is not about making a new yardstick to determine who's the good guys and who's the bad guys and who's the enlightened, the ones who are not polarized or not binary and the unenlightened, the ones who are still in that mess. It's just to give more attention to something that's happening so that we know what we're dealing with here and to illuminate the ways in which we participate in it, understanding that the illumination generates a process of change. Yeah, just that simple. All right, so here's Suzanne is writing about this idea that if our choices, if other people's choices are the product of their conditions of their situation, then that must be true for myself too, and that must mean that we don't have free will, right? And then adding on to that, Todd says, he's questioning this idea that if I were that person, I'd be exactly like they are, or I would do exactly as they do. And this feeling, no, I'd be different, and don't I have a choice? Am I fully conditioned? So I'll say a couple things about that. For one, I'm not actually offering as a mantra, if I were you, I would do exactly as you do. It's more of a step into not knowing away. So that's the first step away from this judgment of, yeah, yeah, I wouldn't do that if I were you. If I were in that situation, I wouldn't do such a thing. And into, gosh, maybe now that I understand what you have been dealing with, yeah, I might do that too. I might have done the same thing if I were in your shoes. I don't know. It's a step into I don't know. I have heard this story from a man who I won't tell the whole story now, but you know, a guy threatened to kill him had a gun to his head a stranger. And he said, Why do you want to kill me? You know, tell me your story before you kill me. I'd like to hear your story first. Don't want to die curious, you know. And the guy told him his childhood and how his father chained him to the bed and beat him with a baseball bat and so forth. And the guy was like, Yeah, if someone did that to me, I might want to kill somebody too. The gunman then said, Well, I don't want to kill you anymore. But that's a whole other story. But basically, we don't know. And when someone does something inexplicable, instead of jumping to blame, which is a non explanation, or jumping to condemnation, and to I would never do that, they must just be evil. That's a non explanation and a way to preserve the existing way of seeing the world. But instead to let go of that into humility and say, Yeah, I don't know why you did that. And why did you do that? This is from one of my key parenting techniques, by the way, which is if one of my children does something that I really don't like to ask, why did you do that? But not with condemnation, like justify yourself, but really with curiosity. Why did you do that? Help me understand this. Yeah, as for the free will part, I am not saying we have no free will. And this is a bigger topic. I think I'm going to do a series on metaphysics. Not because I especially like talking about metaphysics. But because I was asked. But basically, we do have free will, it just doesn't operate in the arena that we think it does. Our free choice to make a very long story short, and you can just take this in as food for thought, you know, I'm not going to really try to establish it. But our arena for free choice is the choice of where to put our attention. Then I'm going to respond to a couple things from Christina here, who said, how do we claim personal sovereignty legally and implicitly from the broken economic enslavement program? And she also said, how can the conscious part of the 99% take creative responsibility and ruffle some feathers and rise up in a peaceful revolution? Sounds good, doesn't it? And also speaking of the rising of the feminine, as she hears Gaia's pain and longs for unity consciousness, yeah. So we can really hold the resonance and truth of this, and the carry my son is in the background here. I don't have studio conditions right now. Yeah. So the resonance of this, at the same time as we hold that we don't know how to do it, we don't even know really what a peaceful revolution is going to look like. I don't think that there have been a successful, has been any successful peaceful revolution, although there have been glimpses of what that might be. And yeah, they're feminine rising. What does that look like? It's not the same as contending with the masculine for dominance to vie with the masculine using the same methods. It's something very, very different that we maybe can see in traditional cultures. Some of them were matriarchal, which doesn't look like patriarchy with women in charge instead of men. It's a totally different understanding of power and choice. And so we don't know what that would look like. I don't think anyone knows what that would look like in a mass society. So let's accept that for now. Because as I keep saying, the state of consciously not knowing invites all kinds of possibilities and creativity that that would be inaccessible from the place of false knowing. Okay, question from Laura talking about navigating challenging relationships. When judgment does come up, she says, when we have people who repeatedly ignore our requests, and ignore our attempts to create clear boundaries, what do we do? Because she says these people create a lot of turbulence and drama in her life and impact her emotionally and drain her energy that could be devoted toward the amazing things that she wants to do in service to the world. So yeah, what do we do? So in fact, the judgments that certain people activate within us can be a clue to something to a deeper understanding of the relationship. Because why, what in ourselves has brought us into these kinds of relationships? What makes us willing to enter these relationships? The judgment to the extent that what we see in another we're also seeing in ourselves can be a clue toward a self understanding that can bring us to a place where we no longer enter those kinds of relationships. Now, just because we're talking about letting go of judgment here, that doesn't mean that we don't act to create boundaries, for example, or to sometimes engage in a struggle with somebody who is trying to take advantage of us. It doesn't mean that we don't guard and protect ourselves when necessary. It's just that these actions do not come from a place of judging the other person and consigning them to a set of labels. But they still could arise out of the necessity of the situation. It's just that when we become curious about where the judgments come from and what it's really like to be that person, that we have other alternatives that are not defined by the labels that the judgment invites. Let's see if there's something else I want to say about that. Yeah, about not being emotionally impacted by it. I find that as my understanding of myself and my judgments and other people grows and understanding grows as we release judgments, because judgments are a distorting lens that affects how we see other people and gives us a false understanding of the other person. So as I find, as my understanding grows, the nature of the emotional impact changes. I don't take it so personally if somebody is say lashing out at me or saying something really unfair. This happens sometimes, I sometimes not too often, but sometimes get really aggressive or pained comments from questions from people in audiences that do bring out, sometimes momentarily or sometimes I have to breathe through it, bring out this persecution, a complex in me, the same feelings I had facing a bully when I was a little kid. When I'm able to breathe through that and not act from that place, which would make me either fight back or shrink back, then I'm able to survey the situation and be like, yeah, okay, how can I make good of this material that's being offered to me? How can I exemplify responding in a different way, for example? Yeah, so it's that, it's a natural shift in response when I'm seeing other than through the eyes of judgment. Question from Ansi here about, thank you, he's talking about this wonderful teacher, he has a math teacher actually and who loves his work and really tries to teach the students and he asks, he wants to say thank you to this teacher and he asks, does gratitude have a role in healing our planet? If it does, what kind of role? So I said, yeah, thank the guy, it could even be anonymous. People really like to be seen in their best self and have that recognized and the role that this has in healing the planet is that when something is seen and recognized, that waters that thing and helps it to grow and helps us to know that it's appreciated and valued. As I am fond of saying, I think I might, I don't know if I said it in this course or not, but the invitation, the story that we hold about somebody is an invitation for them to be that. So this, a sincere thank you and appreciation of a gift is an invitation for that person to step more into those gifts. I mean, everyone's probably experienced this to be seen in what you do the most beautifully is a huge encouragement. Yeah, and this is one of the technologies of a change agent in the new story. How do we create allies? How do we invite people to be part of the change instead of forcing them, attempting to force them to be part of the change? How do we speak to that within them that already wants what we want? And the technology of thanks, of Thanksgiving, which comes from, it can't be manipulative, it has to come from a sincere appreciation of what that person has done has to come from actual gratitude. This is a potent means of changing the world and inviting it into conformity with your gratitude. Because gratitude is the state of, and this is part of the living in the gift course, you know, it's the state of the knowledge of having received, the knowledge that the universe is generous, the knowledge that the events of our lives aren't just these arbitrary random fluctuations of space time, but that there is some kind of gift in them, some kind of intentionality, some kind of coordination with our own inner being. From that place of gratitude, all kinds of powers are available to us, all kinds of alliances are available to us. And I mean like alliances with the forces of nature, the patterns and the intelligences of the world. Anyway, that gets into all kinds of stuff about synchronicity and things, but if you cultivate a, see I don't even want to say a gratitude practice, it's really noticing what's already true. So if you give attention to that and develop gratitude, you will experience all kinds of miracles and synchronicity. Question from Sirius here about corporations, they're so powerful, how can they be transformed into a force for good that would perhaps fit into the narrative of the new story? Really, so two things, one is that the operating environment of the corporation has to change, and that includes the entire economic system and the legal system that's around corporations. They are especially good at doing what the economy, the money system compels everybody to do, which is to ruthlessly maximize self-interest. But we humans aren't quite as good at it because we have all kinds of emotions and attachments and love and stuff like that, and a corporation doesn't have, it's organized in a way that enables it to be much more ruthless. Yet, even when the macro environment is the way that it is, obviously there's still a lot of variation among corporations. Some of them are much more destructive and ruthless than others and some are more ethical. So there is always an opportunity to take the step to the edge of what the environment allows. And this willingness to do that depends on a change in the inner conditions, which when they change, when people in corporations, decision makers come more into alignment with a story of interbeing, then the ways in which their corporate decisions, their business decisions are not in alignment with that story become more intolerable. And they will see opportunities and choice points that had maybe not been visible before that inner shift had happened. So there is something to, you know, all this stuff about corporate mindfulness and all that kind of stuff. I'm not a huge fan of it, but we can't discount it either. But the main thing is not to ignore the necessity of systemic change when we talk about conscious capitalism and things like that. Okay, here's a question from Melissa Rankin. A lot in this question, but I'll just pick out a couple things here. She says, to let go of everything I think I know so as not to limit what is possible seems wise, yet another part of me is dying to hack healing and know what may wish to remain unknown. And she's basically saying like, we don't want to just throw away everything we already know indiscriminately. And so she says, I wonder if like so many other issues I wrestle with, the solution to this inner wrestle lies in holding the paradox, what if both are true? Okay, so from one thing, you know, we're not talking about discarding everything that we know, we're talking about the way I approach it is the things that we thought we knew that we held in certainty that are starting to feel a little tired, a little overworn, a little dogmatic, or that contradict some data point that has come in. And we face the choice of do I discard the data point? Or do I question the belief? So those are the things that are ripe for unlearning or the things that that are just generating stuck situations. And this applies to the political situation too. So that's that's what I'm talking about. As for, yeah, so it's not just, you know, indiscriminately questioning everything, there are things that come up for questioning. And as for holding paradox, this is a really, this is a really important point. Because as these contradictory data points come in, and as we play with maybe the opposite of what I thought was true is actually true. Maybe there's truth in both, but you don't we don't know. So the step out of a false knowing, or an obsolete knowing is not to know the opposite. But it is there's a in between space where both seem true. So holding the paradox, though, does not mean, Oh, yeah, both are true. So I'm not going to worry about it, not going to think about it. It's to let it worry you to hold it to continue holding it without leaping to Okay, I'm just going to go with this one or leaping to I'm just going to go with that one, or avoiding the whole thing by saying, Yes, life is paradoxical, they're both true. And that's another kind of escape from the paradox to hold the paradox means not to escape it in any of those three ways. But to hold the paradox and let it work at you work on you. And bring you to a place that transcends the paradox, where you can see that that the paradox is itself a product of an assumption that you had not even seen. That was unquestionable. But now you're like, Oh, okay, I was taking the paradox that can be can be generated by a a false assumption. Like, these are classic in in Buddhist practice, you know, that that you have a certain assumption about the self, that isn't actually true. And that generates paradox. Yeah, okay, one more thing about paradox. So basically, a paradox is a message that says your understanding of the universe is incomplete, or your understanding of yourself or your understanding of something is incomplete. So for example, in physics, there is the paradox that the speed of light was the same going toward and away from the light source. And and, like, how could that be? It revealed that there was an assumption that wasn't true, which was the absolute observer independence of spacetime. That and and when time and distance were understood to be relative and the speed of light constant, then the paradox went away. So that would be, yeah, that's an example of the power of holding a paradox and not letting go of it until it reveals what had been hidden underneath it.